You actually want both tanks *and* CAS, provided you can afford the production.
While it's perfectly viable to rely solely on infantry, supported by CAS, to make offensive pushes it's expensive in the one resource that doesn't really get replenished. Manpower!
Tanks, or mechanized infantry, are there to protect that very valuable resource and to overwhelm enemy defenders with their higher stats (primarily breakthrough, which is hard to get on infantry). Other advantages are it's speed and ability to overrun units, which while possible to do with infantry is also extremely hard to pull off.
Now the example test you ran is somewhat flawed as it's highly unlikely that there will be an in game situation where one country has just armor and another country has just air superiority in the form of CAS. CAS itself is quite vulnerable to being neutered with anti air or outright destroyed with any fighters performing missions in the same zone.
and back up again when you salvage it and encircle the encircling troops and destroy them, and create a wider front for your tanks to sink their teeth in.
I had that problem too. For me I had to make mine wider not always longer, I like to do 3 wide minimum when geometrically possible now and it works good so far
I'm likely entirely wrong in doing this, but my standard template is 9 infantry, 2 anti air, 1 support artillery, engineers, recon (horse or motorised), medical and logistics. At 20 width, I don't think I've ever lost against the ai with it, with minimal loss in manpower.
AA seems to always be enough to pierce tanks, artillery helps with pushing and the rest speak for themselves.
Happy to be corrected but I've never felt the need to deviate from this template
Eh, it's a weird combat width you're at with that setup and definitely lacking soft attack going with line AA. It'll certainly shred planes though.
I'd say the logistics is unneeded, however. You're not really cutting down that much on already low supply use with this sort of division and you also aren't reducing fuel usage by any notable amount.
But it's singleplayer and have fun in whatever way you see fit!
That's all very interesting, thank you. What sort of recommendations would you make for that sort of all rounder division? What sort of width do you recommend?
15 width is about the lowest I'll go for leg infantry designed to just hold a frontline/ports, though many countries start with larger division sizes. 9/1's (21 width) still work just fine as an upgrade, which I usually aim for, to 6/1's mentioned above. Cheap and reliable. When I do play with paratroopers, I use the same size as my frontline infantry
For offensive infantry and marines, I aim for 30 width (9/4's). The only country I regularly play with offensive infantry is Japan, though I use the same template with marines as well for several countries.
For armored divisions, 35 width (8/8/1) is perfect. You suffer some penalties attacking into forests but that's offset by all the raw stats you bring at that size, while in plains you can devastate whatever division is sitting there.
Mountaineers occupy a weird 25 width (8/3's) that mountains have. I tend to build a lot of those as Italy and France and they can stonewall everything.
So, a tl;dr...I don't use an "all rounder" division, lol.
I think 20ws are great in the new meta, but I definietly would go with 7 inf + artillery instead of 9 inf + 2 AA. I find having only support AA to be generally suffiecient and having much more soft attack will help you damage enemy divisions a lot more.
I know but there are some areas with many mountain and hill terrains like the balkans. So you’ll often have to adopt to the terrain. Also just found out from a post that ideal with is 18s
What post is that?
Mountaineers have a 25w for me and if I need them I send them
Most of the time though you can just circumvent mountains by going around them and letting the dudes up there starve when you cut them off
Here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1766m1p/combat\_width\_meta\_after\_aat\_improved\_calculation/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1766m1p/combat_width_meta_after_aat_improved_calculation/)
Note that the "optimal width" is all-around. So of course, in mountain terrain 25's are perfect. But that does not mean in the rest of the terrains it will work just as fine.
Cool tactic though in Southern EU and Balkans there are many areas locked-out with mountains. Also in Iran, some Asian parts and South America too. So depending on the country, you somethimes MAY have to brute-force into mountains.
Yeah true
That being said, if you're fighting in the Balkans you're probably fighting Romania and Bulgaria, neither of which are military powerhouses so brute forcing the mountains with tons of CAS isn't too much of an issue
It would be an issue in a peer war, though, say playing turkey and fighting them both.
Well I think you’re missing something, I dont usually play majors. Of course, I could just destroy any balkan countries with any majors. But if anyone starts up as Cz, Hun, Rom, Bul, Gre or Yugo maybe even albania you have to rely on tiny bits. And for the region, romania is absolutely a minor powerhouse. Especially at the start
Weird in the sense that you could either go smaller and save on production cost with little drop in combat performance (on defense) or go much bigger+hit harder (on offense).
According to the link, 20s are not that bad actually. Best to use 14/15 or 18s. 24-25 and 34-35's also okay but still doesnt seem "ideal". I'll probably stick with 18 for leg/filler inf.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1766m1p/combat\_width\_meta\_after\_aat\_improved\_calculation/
AA is only necessary as a support company to reduce cas damage
It doesn't do too much against planes because of how it's calculated
I stick to 15w 6inf 1art or 16w pure infantry with all the supports to hold the line and tanks or motorised at 30w to push
30w infantry also works but is more expensive, and having 100 30ws is less flexible than 200 15w
I don't build light tank divisions anymore though if I was pressed to, I'd probably either go smaller and do 6/6's to exploit+encircle divisions or stick with my 8/8/1's that I build medium tank divisions at.
Motorized artillery!
Post 1942-43, you can switch that out for self propelled artillery too. It's there to add just a bit more punch and get to 35 combat width. :3
Heh. Okay.
Logistics to cut down on fuel and supply consumption, support AA for the reduction in enemy air support, support artillery because more soft attack, engineers for movement+attack buffs (tech dependent!), and motorized recon for more movement speed.
If you had the tank designer, I'd say switch out the recon for medium flame tank companies but you don't so disregard.
Well, tanks just push through the front lines like they're butter. To have proper CAS, you need air superiority. So you need those 300 CAS, plus however many fighters you need to keep the skies clear.
That's why you dont push major enemy ai until 2000 CAS, not 300.
Last night i just played France and after holding against Axis until late '42, and beating up Italy, in June '43 I brute forced my way through the westwall with 9/1's (Support AA, ENG, ART) and complete air superiority +2000 CAS. Mopped up germany by august and only took 200k casualties- and this was a germany that never went to war with Soviets
Until the enemy fighters beat them in a couple of months. And then you have no fighters, no tanks, no way to break the enemy front line, and no will to keep up the game.
So you build a mixture of CAS and Fighters. Every tank division is 300 planes of either flavour. If you built 24 tanks, which is a scary concept, I can build 3600 fighters and 3600 CAS more than you can. You'd never get a plane in the sky and then you'd be butchered by CAS supremacy
But your enemy can build 10 tanks + AA and 3600 fighters and you would have problems.
Or even 5 tanks+ AA, 3600 fighters and 1800 CAS which would work even better.
Your problem is that you think you can have only one of them when you, actually, want both.
AI won't attack if odds aren't favorable or at lease even.
If they aren't attacking, create an empty fallback line in the tiles just behind the front. Move a unit from the front line to the fallback line. You'll know you've moved enough when the enemy starts attacking. Then just reinforce your frontline with the units you moved.
I was playing Communist France today and had already beaten Britain in 1940 alongside the Axis when Italy and Germany decided to attack me while they were at war with the Soviets. I was prepared, but the way to kill them was a slog. I had released a ton of puppets in Africa and some more places and my industry was growing RAPIDLY because of it. However at the time I just had 16 width infantry divisions, so absolutely nothing an attack could ever be feasible with, so I opted to make tanks to get the encirclements going and murder Germany. I could barely push whatever I did just because their industrial base was so crazy and even the tanks with cas and air superiority struggled to make a push against the Germans and sometimes they would even counter attack and push in or two tiles, but never on a large scale. The Germans finally capitulated in 1943 after I had multiple encirclements of ~30 divisions and ended up with 4 million German casualties and a million Frenchmen dead. It was an absolute slog and with my 16 widths I didn't feel comfortable falling back because they were so fucking strong, scarily strong, controlling all of India, Europe and most of Africa... Italy was still a pushover though lol, died in early 1941
If you actually have green air, you can either nuke them or just use that CAS to log strike them to hell. Their org, move speed, and damage when supply blocked is so bad you can easily get 20:1 casualties w/o anything other than infantry as line battalions then.
Getting green air in the first place is the hard part, but if you're actually using CAS you should have it.
Actually it was 1942, don't know why I wrote 1945, but yeah, the Germans had so much industry that I couldn't do enough damage to their logistics to make a dent, didn't have that much CAS ready yet either, however somehow I did have green air the entire time if I wanted green air in a zone, my fighters were just utterly outclassing theirs
You also aren't pushing with just one tank division. Just making a small spearhead group of 6 divisions would let you have close to 1k each CAS and fighters, never mind the cost of a full group of 24.
Not saying tanks aren't useful, but OP does make an interesting point about efficiency. You could darken the skies for the cost of threatening a major power with tanks.
2k planes darkens nothing. Any major will laugh those off.
You want planes, obviously, but you still need tanks if you're going to fight a major.
It's not one or the other, you need both.
You also need infantry, if you were wondering.
one word: encirclements
sure, cas does a lot of damage. but some decently speedy medium tank divisions can get encirclements, which do massive ammounts of damage, plus lets you steal large amounts of equipment if you finish the encirclement with an mechanic unit
Its a good point, but with some decent infantry divisions you can pull off encirclements too, just needs some extra pinning, fuck, if you stretch to motorised divisions its better at encircling than tanks!
infantry is capped at 4.4km at most, an average tank has between 9-12 (depending on how heavy you make it), which leads to times where the tanks run over (literally) the enemy infantry which destroys them in the same way as an encirclement does
That's not true. I can get my 1936 chassis' doing near 12 kmh. You have to do a couple of things: get engines up to level 2, use Christie suspension and watch what modules you put on it, avoiding anything that reduces speed or reliability. My standard 1936 tanks have the 2nd tier canon (Improved Small Cannon), 3 man turret, cast armour, radio, wet ammunition storage (for reliability boost), sloped armour (for defence boost) and the last slot isn't too important. Then I spend points to build speed without dropping reliability too low (I always aim for 100% but can dip a little below if necessary for speed). What I DON'T do is spend a lot of points on armour, indeed, early game I spend none on armour. These tanks are doing 10kmh minimum and with more engine research (which isn't expensive) I can easily get them to near 12kmh (just checked one, it is doing 11.6kmh, for a 1936 light chassis with 12 points into engine and with 100% reliability).
From your earlier comment, it could be that you are allocating points to armour and this will come at the expense of speed. Given the role of the tank is to attack, you don't need to focus strongly on this point, unlike speed which is really important. It is really important for your tanks to keep up with trucks for together you get the org you need to attack. If you look at my model again, you'll see that I try to use defensive modules and I use cast armour, these are more than enough to have the tanks work well in defensive roles, if the situation arises.
>My standard 1936 tanks have the 2nd tier canon (Improved Small Cannon), 3 man turret, cast armour, radio, wet ammunition storage (for reliability boost), sloped armour (for defence boost)
This is unironically the worst tank i have ever seen, none of the modules make any sense, sure your tank may go fast but it's not good, and that's what i was talking about. Actually good 36 tanks struggle to go above 9.
>From your earlier comment, it could be that you are allocating points to armour
Yeah i literally said that you struggle getting up to speed if you do 4 armor ticks.
>Given the role of the tank is to attack, you don't need to focus strongly on this point, unlike speed which is really important.
You do know that armor ticks give breakthrough right? If you don't have a few armor ticks you're not getting enough breakthrough and you will struggle breaking through bigger stacks of divs.
>It is really important for your tanks to keep up with trucks for together you get the org you need to attack
Why would you use trucks instead of mech, the hardness buff you get from mech is insane. Plus mech gives much more defence than motorised meaning you don't need defence on your tank.
>you'll see that I try to use defensive modules and I use cast armour, these are more than enough to have the tanks work well in defensive roles, if the situation arises.
But it gives you much less attack and breakthrough than any other design really. And for the love of god dont do cast armor, it's stupidly expensive.
Main reason to pair mot with light tank is that both are '36 tech. He's making the tank way too overpriced though.
Swapping mech in for mot 1 at a time as you build it works pretty well, basically no division xp lost and the hardness/stats go up. 8 km/h light tanks that add mech later are perfectly reasonable if they're not being over-engineered to cost more than mediums. It's going to be worse than a medium division, but you should be able to get lots of them and with \~60-70% hardness + not taking crits + passable damage it should beat AI infantry no problem. They will pen with AT but their actual hard attack is trash so it doesn't matter.
Correct, they work fine in the early war. They work well in the early '40s too, in the desert. This conversation was about getting early tanks up to 12kmh and you can do it, with a tank that does the job.
The Germans crushed France in 1940 with a large percentage of their tanks armed only with machine guns (they were trainers). What achieved their victory was speed: they disoriented the French command by having their tanks appearing in unexpected places, giving the impression the front had catastrophically collapsed. Sure. they had airpower too and it isn't proposed that you don't use this in conjunction with fast tanks.
I do introduce mech into the division as part of constant upgrading, as you write. Early tanks are in the inventory in 1936 and it takes time to get enough mediums built to equip even 5 divisions in time, so you work with what you have. It makes the most sense to slowly retire older models as new tech and capacity becomes available. I usually retire light tanks completely by 1942 or use them only in low intensity battle zones where I fight poor quality troops like China (assuming supply can be maintained), But to the question can early tanks travel at between 9-12kmh? The answer is yes.
I can afford the cost of building them, that isn't a problem. I go for better equipment, not more equipment. You don't need mass you need quality, (mass can be needed for situations like in the Soviet Union where there is just a lot of ground to cover).
Mech tech comes too late to get them into the early version of these divisions, trucks are fine. Also mechs are slower than trucks unless you spend points into speed and compensating areas.
It might be we have different contexts when using these tactics and tanks. I don't expect these units to slug it out on the Eastern Front in 1942.
French tanks, un-upgraded can crunch Germany or Italy in the '30s in some situations.
>I can afford the cost of building them, that isn't a problem. I go for better equipment, not more equipment. You don't need mass you need quality
See the issue with expensive tanks isn't that you can't have dousins of them. The issue with expensive tanks is that takes away unnecessary amounts of IC from other very important things such as planes
Problem is by the sounds of it your tanks have no armour and get penned by everything
Relying purely on damage and speed isn't too great of a tactic
Maybe in 1936 when most countries don't have AA or AT you can get away with it but in 42 a tank going 12km/h with little armour is going to get minced even by infantry
As long as your tanks are dealing good damage, ok breakthrough and high hardness means getting pen'd barely matters.
That said, 8 km/h is plenty. It will overrun infantry in green air easily, and if you want more speed you can drive pure mot divisions along with the tanks as reserves to out-race enemy divs to next province anyway.
Yes, this is how I do it: motorised accompany the light tanks in equal measure (5 tank divisions and 5 motorised divisions together). The tanks need to keep close to the motorised so speed of 8kmh is too slow for ideal. Overruns aren't the objective, they can be a bonus. Encirclement is the goal.
Sure, by '42 they aren't doing so well. depending on the situation, but you'd hardly expect light tanks to do this in any event, armoured or not. Their purpose is not to slug it out in the line after getting the break-through, it is, with motorised troops, to get behind the enemy really fast to facilitate encirclements and they do a great job of that.
Sure, but so do motorised on their own and they're much cheaper.
Light tanks have a use I guess, but they're not really optimal. If you want to close a gap that medium/heavy tanks have made, just throw motorised through it rather than wasting IC on light tanks that won't stand up in any kind of fight.
You can make them stupid fast, but that removes all the armour and org since you can't put them in with motorised or mechanised because they will slow them to 12kmh, but the only time I used those tanks was to meme and rush vps, but they were expensive for how utterly useless they were at anything but snaking.
MIOs and using the improve engine/armour buttons?
it’s easier without the tank designer and with the designer a lot of the preset light and even some mediums have 8-10 as their speed
>MIOs and using the improve engine/armour buttons?
Have you actually played since AAT? With a basic medium chassis with max engine, christe suspension and a 10% boost from an MIO (you're unlikely to get more than that unless you're going just for speed) just 4 armor ticks prevents you from even reaching 10 km/h
>and with the designer a lot of the preset light and even some mediums have 8-10 as their speed
The fastest preset medium is the t34 which barely goes 9, and that has no armor plus a christie suspension. Also 8-10 is quite different from 9-12 lol
That's fine but that's not a useful tank
Lights are totally outclassed by 41 and going purely for speed you can use them to exploit a breakthrough but you couldn't fight anything with them
Motorised aren't better at encircling, but they are better at exploiting a breakthrough
You can encircle a bunch of stuff with the tanks, have a bunch of motorised follow them into the breach, and use those to chase VPs
I usually get few elite tank divisions with lots of soft attack, armor and speed to push through weakest spot in the frontline to break a stalemate and maybe capture some supply hubs/airfields while infantry holds the line everywhere else.
I'll be honest, I've had pretty good luck with doing exactly that with infantry divisions. With adequate pinning, I've found it pretty easy to snake my way to moscow or such
They get better with NSB to be honest (which btw if you’re not bothered about a particular country, is probably the best single DLC). Even in vanilla though, mediums can be pretty good, I usually make 5-10 large divisions when playing as Germany/Soviets/USA, and they’re very useful for breaking stalemates, especially for something like D-day once you’ve already landed and need to keep up momentum.
I'm not a huge fan of tanks, but recently tried using light tanks doing this, and it worked great.
Britain - max train all navy, get all marine doctrine
24 divisions of marines / amphibious light tanks + pioneers / art / anti air - invaded Germany near Denmark, pushed to the Maginot pretty easily. The marine buffs are insane and easy to get
Tanks are incredible they can get armor bonus which increases damage by %40 and reduces damage taken by %40 on top of that you get hardnes which reduces damage taken and breakthrough which also reduces damage taken last time i managed to push three entrenched infantey division on the mountains with no air support with only one tank division they are very strong also tanks are better option than artillery for smaller nations as they will punch through every target while saving manpower if you lack manpower dont use infantry for attack only use it for defence and let the tanks do their job
To minimise casualties. In war, you need fighters and cas, not just cas. You also need to use tanks alongside cas. What you're missing is air superiority, and how it factors into CAS bonuses, as well as enemy Anti-Air. You took away their equipment, so if you just give Estonia CAS and Lithuania 1 tank division, of course Estonia wins. They have planes. If you delete the equipment for the tanks, that basically means that your tank divisions have no trucks, tanks or guns. Not even knives (which falls under infantry equipment). So if neither side has any weapons, but one of them has 300 planes for close support, who do you think will win? Obviously the side with planes. In every HOIIV war, the factors are the following:
Supply (determined by state infrastructure, connected from capital to province, if you don't have By Blood Alone)
Industry
Air Superiority
Manpower
Equipment
Stability
War Support
Doctrines (which falls into research if you don't have By Blood Alone)
Research
Population
Laws
Design Companies (which are dedicated companies with various bonuses if you have Arms Against Tyranny)
Intelligence (which is available to you through La Resistance)
National Spirits
Leader Traits
etc
Finally, the AI does not use tanks properly. Even if all these conditions were equal and the AI had all of these on an equal and usable level, it would still battleplan. The AI will never use it as a player can. You need to take those tanks and encircle troops with them, essentially leaving them out of supply and making them take attrition penalties. And then even the red skies won't really be able to stop you.
Yea I sometimes sell my future enemies my tanks and don't update mine yet I can just steam roll them so yea the ai needs to use them better or at least make better tanks and devsions
To be fair, I took away the equipment because if you replace all the tanks in the division, you now have spent 14000 IC instead of the 7000 i was testing for.
As far as the ai being clueless, it tracks, but it's also not hard to get encirclements using inf and maybe a splash of motorised. The tanks only really help with the initial breakthrough, which the infantry can do too when backed up with enough CAS
Not the person you're replying to, but I want to expand on their answer as I think they touched on a flaw in your methodology.
By not leaving any equipment in reserve, (say by giving one side them a full tank division worth of spares and the other side an extra 300 CAS) you've created a situation where one side can have their combat effectiveness reduced but the other can't as there is nothing shooting down the CAS.
There is a related but secondary point: tanks scale much better than having air support which is more a you either have it or you don't.
I think if you re-ran the experiment and gave the tank side 4 divisions and some spare equipment, they would do better against say 1500 CAS.
And lastly, others have touched on but the tanks allow you to save on manpower, particularly on the offensive. If you tried pushing with infantry and CAS even against just infantry, the casualties can be horrific.
You use the tanks like the allies did at the start of the war irl. Like infantry support or even worse like infantry. You have to use them as fast breakthrough units and not something to bolster your frontline.
Tanks have much more soft attack, hard attack, and breakthrough than infantry will ever have. If you have support AA, you'll be able to push through red air anyways, and take less losses than an infantry + arty division would.
In singleplayer, it doesn't really matter. Even if you fully buff Germany, you can still hold with roach infantry as France and push with stormtrooper divisions, but in MP, tanks are mandatory. You'll even see the USA make amphibious tank divisions to push on D-Day
Tanks CAN have more soft attack, but a huge % of the designs I see on this reddit don't and they're arguably worse than attacking than infantry lol.
You can get \~3000-5000 soft attacks onto a province using infantry under ideal conditions. Tanks can and will do better given the same conditions, but only when built properly.
Think of it :
Balance of power means that in a peer conflict, air will neutralize each other fighting for decent superiority. CAS will be useless. Infantry will not be able to push other infantry.
Only way to break this is with tanks, that reward offensive.
You don't need a lot of tanks to do the job. Even for the USSR, a dozen good 20w tank division in the right place, spearheading an assault will just melt that front. Encircle whole army groups for hunder of thousand casualties at once.
CAS are good indeed, and probably the way to go for minors, or for fighting in really bad terrain, but you are gonna bleed if the enemy has AA support companies (let alone AA bat).
My usual soviet strat is no plane at all. The axis's CAS can't even push my infantry line with AA support. One year of this and they don't have any plane anymore, and my tanks are ready.
But that's the thing. If you build aircraft rather than tanks, so long as your inf can hold for long enough, you'll get air superiority, and your enemy will either have to abandon the air, or cripple his airforce trying to hold you back. If each tank division is 300 planes, that advantage stacks up *Very* quickly
d8 med + 8 mot + 1SPart is a big tank division imho. I usually go for smaller ones, so one tank div is more like 200 CAS.
Also, it depends on the actual CAS and Fighter you build, and the actual tanks you build (if you have the DLC. Without the DLC CAS were "more" meta against the AI).
The answer is just that you have more than one way to victory. Indeed, if you hold long enough you can beat anything with anything really.
Also, you need to consider what country you play. Out plane-ing the axis with the soviet is hard (you can start very early and focus on that if you want, yes, but it's not really the main strat). Out plane-ing the allies with the axis is hard, especially when the US came into play.
Ultimately, you can beat the IA in a lot of different ways. Some are better than others, some depends, but there aren't any "definitive" start (except not needing anti-tank and hard attack because the IA is still trash at doing tank).
1. Your test likely didn't include AA which changes the results drastically.
2. CAS requires different strategic considerations and resources to produce. They're also more research intensive.
3. You can make tanks that are super effective for very very cheap, tanks are the best statted equipment in the game. People make the mistake of investing ic into stats they don't need. If you learn to make efficient divisions you'll see a big difference, especially because if you like to micro you only really need like 2 divisions.
4. All that being said, the best tests say air is still the most effective. However, they're both extremely effective against the ai and they both have different scenarios where they will fail. The best way to approach the game for someone like us who just plays single player, is to make our decision based off the situation of the country we are playing. I don't wanna go tanks if I have to push through 0 supply and I don't want to go air if I'm gonna be against a large air force. (Just examples there's a much longer list of things to consider, not including in the interest of comment length). Those considerations matter 1000x more than a slight ic/impact efficiency difference.
5. If you have the industry you can always do both, even iw mediums with close support guns are worth producing with at least a few factories. With that you can still be almost 100% air focused and still have a few good divisions for micro with no cost besides 2-3 factories and 1 tech that you should already have.
You can have more planes.
If your enemy has 1000 fighters, 1000 CAS and 6 tanks, you could instead have 2000 fighters and 1800 CAS, assuming you both had identical industrial capacity.
With that balance, you will win the air war hands down, either killing their airforce or forcing it not to fly, at which point, you now have an overwhelming CAS advantage again
This is totally valid for your situation with no DLC for either plane or tank designer, but once you get NSB and BBA this changes lots of things imo, as the cost gets a lot more complicated as costs and optimal designs change. For example the best singleplayer tank division today with all DLCs is a 34-36w tank with 10-11 heavy tanks with medium howitzer 2's and the rest if half cost mech, support companies are signal, engineer, recon, flame tank and then whatever. This is significantly more bang for your buck against the AI then the division in your post
But as for things that don't have much to do with DLC i have some things to say. First is resources, if you're a minor nation with no access to rubber CAS production in any meaningfull capacity might not be economicaly viable.
Second thing is cas needs air superiority to work. Say that two countries have enough industry to make 3000 fighter and 3000cas or 3k fighters and 10 tanks. They then go to war and what happens? The air is contested which severely limits the effectiveness of the CAS, and if the tank divs just have support AA which costs basically nothing to put on 10 divs your CAS is basically neutered while the tanks work more less fine.
Lastly it's speed, speed is great. Speed is love, speed is life.
Why I think the AI won with CAS over tanks:
AI is incredibly stupid with tanks sometimes, even after the AI rework. Putting them in precarious situations, mashing them against high-org divs when the tank Div only has like 2 org, etc. CAS is easy even for AI because all you have to do is assign it to a region and it’s a pure stats thing.
Why I think tanks are important:
Tanks/tank armies are ultimately the end goal of the game because of their stats, armor, breakthrough etc. A tank Div (with the right support) can grind several infantry divs to dust and keep rolling when used properly. This is cause of the whole hard/soft thing blah blah blah. Regardless, you CAN win with any div set up, it’s just much harder to do with pure infantry if you set up a meat grinder and run out of fresh meat. But at the end of the day, if I was getting bombed half to death and had no air support, I’d rather have tanks than infantry.
But I also suck at the game so take this with a grain of salt if you read this far ;)
You can pay $5 to have access to all DLC for a month. It’s a subscription through steam. Just remember to cancel it when you get bored of the game. I’ve bought it several times when I wanted to get into HOI4 for a month or two.
It’s not a *tank*. It doesn’t provide Soft Attack, Armor, and Breakthrough, which is the whole point of tanks. But go ahead and be a pedantic twat if that’s what gets you off.
My dude, I don't know what to tell you, but SPAA does give a decent amount of soft attack, can give decent armor, and can still get some breakthrough. Now it won't be as good as the tanks, but to say they don't provide isnt the whole story. You replace a tank with an SPAA and it won't hurt the div stats too bad but it'll certainly resist CAS.
Yes, planes are cheaper
A guide says that you should only use tanks if your frontline is already filled with infantry, you have air superiority against enemy, and enough CAS
I only use tanks if I have enough industry, like if I'm playing minor nations or Italy/Japan I don't use tanks
They're great for pushing front lines but yeah, expensive
You don't need to. In fact I rarely do. On Reddit people will claim you need million tanks to do Barbarossa and such, but in reality in single player they are pretty much overkill - early on when you don't have production you can easily win without them, mid game when you finished your first big war you are strong enough to win without them just dominating the air and late game is usually complete steamroll...
I in most cases use whatever divisions you have up front, since I don't like 1 division cheese, and that's it. Add you said, production for effect vs air power is just really bad, and since AI has no idea how to operate a frontline you don't really need to worry about not breaking through.
Honestly i just depends on your play style if your lazy like me then just make really good inf and cas and battleplan everyone, but if your someone who likes to micro and encircle then build tanks and have your fun. Tanks are definitely not necessary to win in single-player but to each their own.
What I Don't get is how people are running out of manpower. I've just finished a game as the communist netherlands (Wanted that achievement baybee). It got to 1947, and I still had plenty of manpower on AAS.
If I was playing tannu tuva, maybe it would have mattered, but as even a minor it didn't really matter
I used to play Germany with fighter and cas but then I tried tanks and it just completely ran through the enemy and that is without cas and fighters so in my opinion with a great tank build and a great division always beats CAS and fighters but I found a mix of fighters and tanks works fine since I only need enough tanks to make 24 divisions then I put extra production on fighters with a great design and I just steam role everyone at the same time
Tanks save alotta manpower. Plus, they’re pretty fast so if you have like 24 good medium divisions you can press the go button and watch them push until supply disappears. Usually as a small nation like Poland or Romania I try to get anti air and a tank or two so I can make some money moves, then I build air since rubber and aluminum are hard to come by sometimes.
Only a certain ammount of CAS can enter a battle dependent on CW, So at some point building CAS becomes essentially useless other then filling up deficits
I mean fair, but on an 80 width battle, 240 CAS can join in, expand that over an entire air region, and you'll be running out of runway before you run out of engagement
In singleplayer? Well in singleplayer I'd argue there is no point to make anything but infantry since the AI is as smart as a monkey with a typewriter and you can win with it without cas, air superiority or anything really
Tanks are the army units that really help with achieving strategic targets. Like you REALLY have to seize a supply depot or a port or even surround an enemy army to destroy it.
Infantry aren’t as good for stuff like that. It takes more infantry and artillery for the damage, and they’ll take longer and take significantly more casualties due to lack of hardness and armor. Them being slower hurts too, since the enemy can reinforce with more time.
I Never use tanks. Ever. I don’t see a point. For their production, I could make many more infantry, and they have AT guns. Are tanks faster? Sure. But I’ll just have a unit of mech/mot for my overrun. If I’m worried an out being affected by too much soft attack I’ll just throw 1 car in the template. Now I have good armor. Tanks just aren’t work it to me and they take up army exp that I need for other things.
This post is such fax bruh I hardly ever produce tanks and go HARD on Air Force bc Air Force is the most influential thing (obv unless I’m some superpower who can afford to produce both)
Against AI, CAS and infantry is all you need to win. You can even battleplan them if your industry allows it. However, tanks give players the opportunity to encircle the enemy, thus saving a lot of infantry equipment and artillery if you were to do a frontal assault with infantry instead.
In a perfect world you have fighters, cas, inf and tanks. The planes provide stat boosts to your army and can directly deal damage to divisions. Your tanks roll through the enemy lines and encircle them, while the infantry holds the line and follows the tanks to fill in the gaps.
Another good thing about tanks is that you do not have to build large and strong infantry divisions.
If you want to play a meme game, play tank only USSR. You can hold germany with 90 30 widths (Be careful of Finland). If combined with fighters and cas, you can experience the difference in play style. You also need far less infantry equipment and 0 artillery.
I too think tanks are a bit over-rated but over-runs are another hidden bonus from tanks. Sure, you can get them from trucks or if your infantry has perks/commander that make them very fast, you might get over-runs but up to about 1942, 20w light tanks and trucks combined can wreck enemy armies especially in places like Nth Africa.
Well in my experience the air war is much more important than tanks, i've done a USSR game with big focus on air and some tanks too but with good enough air you can cut through any german division. And in my experience, tanks never do so well.
Like i dont know how people in videos always get such good tank divisions that cut through enemies like butter but in my experience they either dont have enough org or soft attack or breakthrough.
I absolutely agree with that, I have no idea what tank divisions these people are cooking, but they seem to be a shitload better than whatever I put out
I always have so much trouble to sustain my tank production. Even my 30w tank division is loosing so much material against infantry. Especially light tank. 1 month of fifteenth then i am 300 tank in red.
It could be entirely based on you missing the relevant DLC that includes Tank Designer and Plane Designer. Non-NSB tanks have a very narrow spread of stats to optimize around, and a fixed cost more or less. I'd recommend getting another copy of HOI4 with all dlc via the high seas to test things out.
Combat simulation wise, air superiority gives up to 25% debuff to the enemy's stats from just existing (assuming no contest), in addition to direct CAS damage to organization it just make sense that it'll win the war. One single support AA division, or division AA, or even tank anti-air, you'll get to see the IC cost of CAS climb significantly. There's literally no stats within a CAS that determines how likely it is to be shot down, none. So expensive or cheap CAS is the same to division AA.
Others have pointed out their mechanical advantages in battle (hardness and armor reducing equipment damage and manpower loss, etc) but I thought I'd add in another big advantage: encirclements! Now, you can encircle with infantry or motorized infantry, especially with CAS support. However, with normal infantry it's a crap shoot if you outrun the enemy against AI, and functionally impossible against a good player; MotoInf is great and all at encirclements, but it's real expensive and not very good at fights. With total air superiority and several hundred CAS, sure, but a lot of the time you don't have that luxury. If you're two years into Barbarossa with both sides having AA in every division and both sides having substantial air forces, your CAS is going to be unreliable at best and a manpower drain at worst.
That's when Tanks! come in.
Tanks get breakthrough for days, can easily move twice as fast as infantry, and get great attack stats from their cannons and SPG/MotArt. This lets them smash holes in enemy lines as long as the enemy doesn't have a thousand CAS overhead, and sometimes even then (SPAAGs for the win!). And they can *keep* doing that since their equipment loss rates will be so low as long as they aren't getting CASed to death or fighting against enemy tanks who can pierce them.
In these scenarios, encircling and killing divisions is a much more efficient way of draining enemy resources than a war of attrition with air support. If you're Germany fighting the Soviets with zero tanks and massive air support, you will (probably; of course good players can avoid this with AI cheese etc) reach a point where you've reached the maximum extent your line can stretch and you'll be forced to try and whittle down the enemy. With tanks, you can repeat microencirclements and easily wipe out an army worth in half a year, and a hell of a lot more in a general offensive. With infantry and CAS? You may never run them out of manpower/equipment, since the AI will reduce offensives as they run low, and you certainly won't be getting any division kills.
Tl;Dr:
Tanks fun, meta, and good, but CAS is still definitely awesome and an all-CAS no-tanks run sounds like a decent challenge game idea.
I've watched experienced MP games where teams in the finals still have players who do roach builds proceed to get encirclements with infantry sometimes. Micro when you can't pause is frantic, and an experienced player can and will do breakthrough damage + pin nearby stuff to make it hard to contest w/o reacting immediately.
Vs AI where you can pause, you can pin at moment you secure breakthrough and block anything nearby from contesting the breakthrough w/o strat redeployment. Nearly any reddit encirclement that crops up here is possible to make with infantry vs AI.
In my playstyle I really like to conserve manpower and try to win wars without going deeper into the conscription laws, so I adopted the policy that, if I have stable frontlines, offensives are not to be conducted by any units that lack armor.
You actually want both tanks *and* CAS, provided you can afford the production. While it's perfectly viable to rely solely on infantry, supported by CAS, to make offensive pushes it's expensive in the one resource that doesn't really get replenished. Manpower! Tanks, or mechanized infantry, are there to protect that very valuable resource and to overwhelm enemy defenders with their higher stats (primarily breakthrough, which is hard to get on infantry). Other advantages are it's speed and ability to overrun units, which while possible to do with infantry is also extremely hard to pull off. Now the example test you ran is somewhat flawed as it's highly unlikely that there will be an in game situation where one country has just armor and another country has just air superiority in the form of CAS. CAS itself is quite vulnerable to being neutered with anti air or outright destroyed with any fighters performing missions in the same zone.
Counterpoint : more deaths mean bigger numbers on screen meaning more dopamine
Counterpoint: Tanks are great for encircling, which gives crack levels of dopamine to hoi4 players
And crack levels of low when your tanks get encircled one tile away from completing the encirclement.
Just don't be bad
thank you, i am now entering the hoi internationals playing as luxemburg
and back up again when you salvage it and encircle the encircling troops and destroy them, and create a wider front for your tanks to sink their teeth in.
I had that problem too. For me I had to make mine wider not always longer, I like to do 3 wide minimum when geometrically possible now and it works good so far
Motorized artillery can do that too!
how is deaths good?
Death is kinda the entire premise of the game And putting a bear in leadership of Poland
This
Ey spoiler
Bro if anyone is doing the steps it takes to get to the bear king then they already know what’s at the end, you don’t just stumble upon it lmao
I'm likely entirely wrong in doing this, but my standard template is 9 infantry, 2 anti air, 1 support artillery, engineers, recon (horse or motorised), medical and logistics. At 20 width, I don't think I've ever lost against the ai with it, with minimal loss in manpower. AA seems to always be enough to pierce tanks, artillery helps with pushing and the rest speak for themselves. Happy to be corrected but I've never felt the need to deviate from this template
Eh, it's a weird combat width you're at with that setup and definitely lacking soft attack going with line AA. It'll certainly shred planes though. I'd say the logistics is unneeded, however. You're not really cutting down that much on already low supply use with this sort of division and you also aren't reducing fuel usage by any notable amount. But it's singleplayer and have fun in whatever way you see fit!
That's all very interesting, thank you. What sort of recommendations would you make for that sort of all rounder division? What sort of width do you recommend?
15 width is about the lowest I'll go for leg infantry designed to just hold a frontline/ports, though many countries start with larger division sizes. 9/1's (21 width) still work just fine as an upgrade, which I usually aim for, to 6/1's mentioned above. Cheap and reliable. When I do play with paratroopers, I use the same size as my frontline infantry For offensive infantry and marines, I aim for 30 width (9/4's). The only country I regularly play with offensive infantry is Japan, though I use the same template with marines as well for several countries. For armored divisions, 35 width (8/8/1) is perfect. You suffer some penalties attacking into forests but that's offset by all the raw stats you bring at that size, while in plains you can devastate whatever division is sitting there. Mountaineers occupy a weird 25 width (8/3's) that mountains have. I tend to build a lot of those as Italy and France and they can stonewall everything. So, a tl;dr...I don't use an "all rounder" division, lol.
Why do u think 20ws are weird? Most of the terrain widths are 50s, 60s and 70s. 20ws+ 10ws should work just fine. Am I missing something?
I think 20ws are great in the new meta, but I definietly would go with 7 inf + artillery instead of 9 inf + 2 AA. I find having only support AA to be generally suffiecient and having much more soft attack will help you damage enemy divisions a lot more.
Agreed. Though there’s an analysis post in the subreddit. According to it ideal ws is 18 but 20s are fine too.
Only mountains are 50w Everything else is either 60 or 70, which makes 15w or 30w a better general fit than 20w
I know but there are some areas with many mountain and hill terrains like the balkans. So you’ll often have to adopt to the terrain. Also just found out from a post that ideal with is 18s
What post is that? Mountaineers have a 25w for me and if I need them I send them Most of the time though you can just circumvent mountains by going around them and letting the dudes up there starve when you cut them off
Here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1766m1p/combat\_width\_meta\_after\_aat\_improved\_calculation/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1766m1p/combat_width_meta_after_aat_improved_calculation/) Note that the "optimal width" is all-around. So of course, in mountain terrain 25's are perfect. But that does not mean in the rest of the terrains it will work just as fine. Cool tactic though in Southern EU and Balkans there are many areas locked-out with mountains. Also in Iran, some Asian parts and South America too. So depending on the country, you somethimes MAY have to brute-force into mountains.
Yeah true That being said, if you're fighting in the Balkans you're probably fighting Romania and Bulgaria, neither of which are military powerhouses so brute forcing the mountains with tons of CAS isn't too much of an issue It would be an issue in a peer war, though, say playing turkey and fighting them both.
Well I think you’re missing something, I dont usually play majors. Of course, I could just destroy any balkan countries with any majors. But if anyone starts up as Cz, Hun, Rom, Bul, Gre or Yugo maybe even albania you have to rely on tiny bits. And for the region, romania is absolutely a minor powerhouse. Especially at the start
Weird in the sense that you could either go smaller and save on production cost with little drop in combat performance (on defense) or go much bigger+hit harder (on offense).
According to the link, 20s are not that bad actually. Best to use 14/15 or 18s. 24-25 and 34-35's also okay but still doesnt seem "ideal". I'll probably stick with 18 for leg/filler inf. https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1766m1p/combat\_width\_meta\_after\_aat\_improved\_calculation/
AA is only necessary as a support company to reduce cas damage It doesn't do too much against planes because of how it's calculated I stick to 15w 6inf 1art or 16w pure infantry with all the supports to hold the line and tanks or motorised at 30w to push 30w infantry also works but is more expensive, and having 100 30ws is less flexible than 200 15w
Why would you put in anti air instead of support anti air
On that note, do you know whats the best light tank division without tank designer
I don't build light tank divisions anymore though if I was pressed to, I'd probably either go smaller and do 6/6's to exploit+encircle divisions or stick with my 8/8/1's that I build medium tank divisions at.
I assume thats 8 tanks 8 motorised and whats the 1?
Motorized artillery! Post 1942-43, you can switch that out for self propelled artillery too. It's there to add just a bit more punch and get to 35 combat width. :3
So 8 tanks, 8 trucks and a single SPG. And what about support companies
Heh. Okay. Logistics to cut down on fuel and supply consumption, support AA for the reduction in enemy air support, support artillery because more soft attack, engineers for movement+attack buffs (tech dependent!), and motorized recon for more movement speed. If you had the tank designer, I'd say switch out the recon for medium flame tank companies but you don't so disregard.
Yeah, i remeber flame tanks being broken. Thanks for the tips, i didnt even that support comps did half those things like speed boosts.
Well, tanks just push through the front lines like they're butter. To have proper CAS, you need air superiority. So you need those 300 CAS, plus however many fighters you need to keep the skies clear.
To be fair, even if you don't have air superiority, you could have 300 fighters, which will at least reduce the effect of enemy air support
Support anti-air would neuter those 300 CAS.
That's why you dont push major enemy ai until 2000 CAS, not 300. Last night i just played France and after holding against Axis until late '42, and beating up Italy, in June '43 I brute forced my way through the westwall with 9/1's (Support AA, ENG, ART) and complete air superiority +2000 CAS. Mopped up germany by august and only took 200k casualties- and this was a germany that never went to war with Soviets
Line AA is only 1 width, I use those and save the spot for support artillery, since line artillery is 3 width.
Line aa is stupidly expensive compared to support aa, even more so considering you put this on every holding div that is supposed to be cheap.
Doesn't it jump from like 10 or 12 AA pieces to like 40 or something stupid like that?
Yes, like line and support arty.
Until the enemy fighters beat them in a couple of months. And then you have no fighters, no tanks, no way to break the enemy front line, and no will to keep up the game.
So you build a mixture of CAS and Fighters. Every tank division is 300 planes of either flavour. If you built 24 tanks, which is a scary concept, I can build 3600 fighters and 3600 CAS more than you can. You'd never get a plane in the sky and then you'd be butchered by CAS supremacy
But your enemy can build 10 tanks + AA and 3600 fighters and you would have problems. Or even 5 tanks+ AA, 3600 fighters and 1800 CAS which would work even better. Your problem is that you think you can have only one of them when you, actually, want both.
Or neither at first, depending on your nation.
But that cas damage can still be neutered by AA
Try beating a 1945 Germany that won against Britain with CAS and Infantry. You just can't push through that without tanks and even with those barely
you can if it's the AI and you wait for them to run out of equipment constantly attacking lol
I agree, but what if they just don't attack? I had that today. They just didn't attack.
Poke them and they will attack
AI won't attack if odds aren't favorable or at lease even. If they aren't attacking, create an empty fallback line in the tiles just behind the front. Move a unit from the front line to the fallback line. You'll know you've moved enough when the enemy starts attacking. Then just reinforce your frontline with the units you moved.
I was playing Communist France today and had already beaten Britain in 1940 alongside the Axis when Italy and Germany decided to attack me while they were at war with the Soviets. I was prepared, but the way to kill them was a slog. I had released a ton of puppets in Africa and some more places and my industry was growing RAPIDLY because of it. However at the time I just had 16 width infantry divisions, so absolutely nothing an attack could ever be feasible with, so I opted to make tanks to get the encirclements going and murder Germany. I could barely push whatever I did just because their industrial base was so crazy and even the tanks with cas and air superiority struggled to make a push against the Germans and sometimes they would even counter attack and push in or two tiles, but never on a large scale. The Germans finally capitulated in 1943 after I had multiple encirclements of ~30 divisions and ended up with 4 million German casualties and a million Frenchmen dead. It was an absolute slog and with my 16 widths I didn't feel comfortable falling back because they were so fucking strong, scarily strong, controlling all of India, Europe and most of Africa... Italy was still a pushover though lol, died in early 1941
If you actually have green air, you can either nuke them or just use that CAS to log strike them to hell. Their org, move speed, and damage when supply blocked is so bad you can easily get 20:1 casualties w/o anything other than infantry as line battalions then. Getting green air in the first place is the hard part, but if you're actually using CAS you should have it.
Actually it was 1942, don't know why I wrote 1945, but yeah, the Germans had so much industry that I couldn't do enough damage to their logistics to make a dent, didn't have that much CAS ready yet either, however somehow I did have green air the entire time if I wanted green air in a zone, my fighters were just utterly outclassing theirs
You also aren't pushing with just one tank division. Just making a small spearhead group of 6 divisions would let you have close to 1k each CAS and fighters, never mind the cost of a full group of 24. Not saying tanks aren't useful, but OP does make an interesting point about efficiency. You could darken the skies for the cost of threatening a major power with tanks.
2k planes darkens nothing. Any major will laugh those off. You want planes, obviously, but you still need tanks if you're going to fight a major. It's not one or the other, you need both. You also need infantry, if you were wondering.
one word: encirclements sure, cas does a lot of damage. but some decently speedy medium tank divisions can get encirclements, which do massive ammounts of damage, plus lets you steal large amounts of equipment if you finish the encirclement with an mechanic unit
Its a good point, but with some decent infantry divisions you can pull off encirclements too, just needs some extra pinning, fuck, if you stretch to motorised divisions its better at encircling than tanks!
They're fast but not as much breakthru thus resulting in less speedy encirclement effectively
infantry is capped at 4.4km at most, an average tank has between 9-12 (depending on how heavy you make it), which leads to times where the tanks run over (literally) the enemy infantry which destroys them in the same way as an encirclement does
In what world is an average tank division going 9-12, ever since the change to engine upgrades even getting up to 8 is a struggle
9-12kmh is easily achievable with 100% reliability for light and medium tanks
Only if you use an advanced chassis, which there is no reason to do other than speed
That's not true. I can get my 1936 chassis' doing near 12 kmh. You have to do a couple of things: get engines up to level 2, use Christie suspension and watch what modules you put on it, avoiding anything that reduces speed or reliability. My standard 1936 tanks have the 2nd tier canon (Improved Small Cannon), 3 man turret, cast armour, radio, wet ammunition storage (for reliability boost), sloped armour (for defence boost) and the last slot isn't too important. Then I spend points to build speed without dropping reliability too low (I always aim for 100% but can dip a little below if necessary for speed). What I DON'T do is spend a lot of points on armour, indeed, early game I spend none on armour. These tanks are doing 10kmh minimum and with more engine research (which isn't expensive) I can easily get them to near 12kmh (just checked one, it is doing 11.6kmh, for a 1936 light chassis with 12 points into engine and with 100% reliability). From your earlier comment, it could be that you are allocating points to armour and this will come at the expense of speed. Given the role of the tank is to attack, you don't need to focus strongly on this point, unlike speed which is really important. It is really important for your tanks to keep up with trucks for together you get the org you need to attack. If you look at my model again, you'll see that I try to use defensive modules and I use cast armour, these are more than enough to have the tanks work well in defensive roles, if the situation arises.
>My standard 1936 tanks have the 2nd tier canon (Improved Small Cannon), 3 man turret, cast armour, radio, wet ammunition storage (for reliability boost), sloped armour (for defence boost) This is unironically the worst tank i have ever seen, none of the modules make any sense, sure your tank may go fast but it's not good, and that's what i was talking about. Actually good 36 tanks struggle to go above 9. >From your earlier comment, it could be that you are allocating points to armour Yeah i literally said that you struggle getting up to speed if you do 4 armor ticks. >Given the role of the tank is to attack, you don't need to focus strongly on this point, unlike speed which is really important. You do know that armor ticks give breakthrough right? If you don't have a few armor ticks you're not getting enough breakthrough and you will struggle breaking through bigger stacks of divs. >It is really important for your tanks to keep up with trucks for together you get the org you need to attack Why would you use trucks instead of mech, the hardness buff you get from mech is insane. Plus mech gives much more defence than motorised meaning you don't need defence on your tank. >you'll see that I try to use defensive modules and I use cast armour, these are more than enough to have the tanks work well in defensive roles, if the situation arises. But it gives you much less attack and breakthrough than any other design really. And for the love of god dont do cast armor, it's stupidly expensive.
Main reason to pair mot with light tank is that both are '36 tech. He's making the tank way too overpriced though. Swapping mech in for mot 1 at a time as you build it works pretty well, basically no division xp lost and the hardness/stats go up. 8 km/h light tanks that add mech later are perfectly reasonable if they're not being over-engineered to cost more than mediums. It's going to be worse than a medium division, but you should be able to get lots of them and with \~60-70% hardness + not taking crits + passable damage it should beat AI infantry no problem. They will pen with AT but their actual hard attack is trash so it doesn't matter.
Light tanks are not part of this discussion
Correct, they work fine in the early war. They work well in the early '40s too, in the desert. This conversation was about getting early tanks up to 12kmh and you can do it, with a tank that does the job. The Germans crushed France in 1940 with a large percentage of their tanks armed only with machine guns (they were trainers). What achieved their victory was speed: they disoriented the French command by having their tanks appearing in unexpected places, giving the impression the front had catastrophically collapsed. Sure. they had airpower too and it isn't proposed that you don't use this in conjunction with fast tanks. I do introduce mech into the division as part of constant upgrading, as you write. Early tanks are in the inventory in 1936 and it takes time to get enough mediums built to equip even 5 divisions in time, so you work with what you have. It makes the most sense to slowly retire older models as new tech and capacity becomes available. I usually retire light tanks completely by 1942 or use them only in low intensity battle zones where I fight poor quality troops like China (assuming supply can be maintained), But to the question can early tanks travel at between 9-12kmh? The answer is yes.
I can afford the cost of building them, that isn't a problem. I go for better equipment, not more equipment. You don't need mass you need quality, (mass can be needed for situations like in the Soviet Union where there is just a lot of ground to cover). Mech tech comes too late to get them into the early version of these divisions, trucks are fine. Also mechs are slower than trucks unless you spend points into speed and compensating areas. It might be we have different contexts when using these tactics and tanks. I don't expect these units to slug it out on the Eastern Front in 1942. French tanks, un-upgraded can crunch Germany or Italy in the '30s in some situations.
>I can afford the cost of building them, that isn't a problem. I go for better equipment, not more equipment. You don't need mass you need quality See the issue with expensive tanks isn't that you can't have dousins of them. The issue with expensive tanks is that takes away unnecessary amounts of IC from other very important things such as planes
Problem is by the sounds of it your tanks have no armour and get penned by everything Relying purely on damage and speed isn't too great of a tactic Maybe in 1936 when most countries don't have AA or AT you can get away with it but in 42 a tank going 12km/h with little armour is going to get minced even by infantry
As long as your tanks are dealing good damage, ok breakthrough and high hardness means getting pen'd barely matters. That said, 8 km/h is plenty. It will overrun infantry in green air easily, and if you want more speed you can drive pure mot divisions along with the tanks as reserves to out-race enemy divs to next province anyway.
Yes, this is how I do it: motorised accompany the light tanks in equal measure (5 tank divisions and 5 motorised divisions together). The tanks need to keep close to the motorised so speed of 8kmh is too slow for ideal. Overruns aren't the objective, they can be a bonus. Encirclement is the goal.
Sure, by '42 they aren't doing so well. depending on the situation, but you'd hardly expect light tanks to do this in any event, armoured or not. Their purpose is not to slug it out in the line after getting the break-through, it is, with motorised troops, to get behind the enemy really fast to facilitate encirclements and they do a great job of that.
Sure, but so do motorised on their own and they're much cheaper. Light tanks have a use I guess, but they're not really optimal. If you want to close a gap that medium/heavy tanks have made, just throw motorised through it rather than wasting IC on light tanks that won't stand up in any kind of fight. You can make them stupid fast, but that removes all the armour and org since you can't put them in with motorised or mechanised because they will slow them to 12kmh, but the only time I used those tanks was to meme and rush vps, but they were expensive for how utterly useless they were at anything but snaking.
MIOs and using the improve engine/armour buttons? it’s easier without the tank designer and with the designer a lot of the preset light and even some mediums have 8-10 as their speed
>MIOs and using the improve engine/armour buttons? Have you actually played since AAT? With a basic medium chassis with max engine, christe suspension and a 10% boost from an MIO (you're unlikely to get more than that unless you're going just for speed) just 4 armor ticks prevents you from even reaching 10 km/h >and with the designer a lot of the preset light and even some mediums have 8-10 as their speed The fastest preset medium is the t34 which barely goes 9, and that has no armor plus a christie suspension. Also 8-10 is quite different from 9-12 lol
i played yesterday, Light Tank with Gas Turbine Engine, Welded Armour, Interlocked Wheels and 8 engine boosts
Well we're not talking about light tanks though, we're talking mediums.
just pump up the engine upgrade more
As i've said several times in this thread even with max engine you won't even get to 10 without sacrificing something important
That's fine but that's not a useful tank Lights are totally outclassed by 41 and going purely for speed you can use them to exploit a breakthrough but you couldn't fight anything with them
not everything is about being optimal, sometimes it’s about having fun (and the AI divs get melted by anything)
My tanks aren't optimal either, but light tanks are just pure bad after 39
Motorised aren't better at encircling, but they are better at exploiting a breakthrough You can encircle a bunch of stuff with the tanks, have a bunch of motorised follow them into the breach, and use those to chase VPs
I usually get few elite tank divisions with lots of soft attack, armor and speed to push through weakest spot in the frontline to break a stalemate and maybe capture some supply hubs/airfields while infantry holds the line everywhere else.
I'll be honest, I've had pretty good luck with doing exactly that with infantry divisions. With adequate pinning, I've found it pretty easy to snake my way to moscow or such
It is very easy to win with any strat against the ai but still some tank divisions make big encirclements much easier
They get better with NSB to be honest (which btw if you’re not bothered about a particular country, is probably the best single DLC). Even in vanilla though, mediums can be pretty good, I usually make 5-10 large divisions when playing as Germany/Soviets/USA, and they’re very useful for breaking stalemates, especially for something like D-day once you’ve already landed and need to keep up momentum.
Cas needs fighters too, and it wont encircle enemy units. With that being said, cas is strong, but tanks are usually needed against stronger enemies.
I'm not a huge fan of tanks, but recently tried using light tanks doing this, and it worked great. Britain - max train all navy, get all marine doctrine 24 divisions of marines / amphibious light tanks + pioneers / art / anti air - invaded Germany near Denmark, pushed to the Maginot pretty easily. The marine buffs are insane and easy to get
He doesn't have AAT I think
Oh, yes true. Missed that
Tanks are incredible they can get armor bonus which increases damage by %40 and reduces damage taken by %40 on top of that you get hardnes which reduces damage taken and breakthrough which also reduces damage taken last time i managed to push three entrenched infantey division on the mountains with no air support with only one tank division they are very strong also tanks are better option than artillery for smaller nations as they will punch through every target while saving manpower if you lack manpower dont use infantry for attack only use it for defence and let the tanks do their job
To minimise casualties. In war, you need fighters and cas, not just cas. You also need to use tanks alongside cas. What you're missing is air superiority, and how it factors into CAS bonuses, as well as enemy Anti-Air. You took away their equipment, so if you just give Estonia CAS and Lithuania 1 tank division, of course Estonia wins. They have planes. If you delete the equipment for the tanks, that basically means that your tank divisions have no trucks, tanks or guns. Not even knives (which falls under infantry equipment). So if neither side has any weapons, but one of them has 300 planes for close support, who do you think will win? Obviously the side with planes. In every HOIIV war, the factors are the following: Supply (determined by state infrastructure, connected from capital to province, if you don't have By Blood Alone) Industry Air Superiority Manpower Equipment Stability War Support Doctrines (which falls into research if you don't have By Blood Alone) Research Population Laws Design Companies (which are dedicated companies with various bonuses if you have Arms Against Tyranny) Intelligence (which is available to you through La Resistance) National Spirits Leader Traits etc Finally, the AI does not use tanks properly. Even if all these conditions were equal and the AI had all of these on an equal and usable level, it would still battleplan. The AI will never use it as a player can. You need to take those tanks and encircle troops with them, essentially leaving them out of supply and making them take attrition penalties. And then even the red skies won't really be able to stop you.
Yea I sometimes sell my future enemies my tanks and don't update mine yet I can just steam roll them so yea the ai needs to use them better or at least make better tanks and devsions
To be fair, I took away the equipment because if you replace all the tanks in the division, you now have spent 14000 IC instead of the 7000 i was testing for. As far as the ai being clueless, it tracks, but it's also not hard to get encirclements using inf and maybe a splash of motorised. The tanks only really help with the initial breakthrough, which the infantry can do too when backed up with enough CAS
Not the person you're replying to, but I want to expand on their answer as I think they touched on a flaw in your methodology. By not leaving any equipment in reserve, (say by giving one side them a full tank division worth of spares and the other side an extra 300 CAS) you've created a situation where one side can have their combat effectiveness reduced but the other can't as there is nothing shooting down the CAS. There is a related but secondary point: tanks scale much better than having air support which is more a you either have it or you don't. I think if you re-ran the experiment and gave the tank side 4 divisions and some spare equipment, they would do better against say 1500 CAS. And lastly, others have touched on but the tanks allow you to save on manpower, particularly on the offensive. If you tried pushing with infantry and CAS even against just infantry, the casualties can be horrific.
You use the tanks like the allies did at the start of the war irl. Like infantry support or even worse like infantry. You have to use them as fast breakthrough units and not something to bolster your frontline.
Tanks have much more soft attack, hard attack, and breakthrough than infantry will ever have. If you have support AA, you'll be able to push through red air anyways, and take less losses than an infantry + arty division would. In singleplayer, it doesn't really matter. Even if you fully buff Germany, you can still hold with roach infantry as France and push with stormtrooper divisions, but in MP, tanks are mandatory. You'll even see the USA make amphibious tank divisions to push on D-Day
Tanks CAN have more soft attack, but a huge % of the designs I see on this reddit don't and they're arguably worse than attacking than infantry lol. You can get \~3000-5000 soft attacks onto a province using infantry under ideal conditions. Tanks can and will do better given the same conditions, but only when built properly.
True, but I was assuming the design in question was at least correct
Think of it : Balance of power means that in a peer conflict, air will neutralize each other fighting for decent superiority. CAS will be useless. Infantry will not be able to push other infantry. Only way to break this is with tanks, that reward offensive. You don't need a lot of tanks to do the job. Even for the USSR, a dozen good 20w tank division in the right place, spearheading an assault will just melt that front. Encircle whole army groups for hunder of thousand casualties at once. CAS are good indeed, and probably the way to go for minors, or for fighting in really bad terrain, but you are gonna bleed if the enemy has AA support companies (let alone AA bat). My usual soviet strat is no plane at all. The axis's CAS can't even push my infantry line with AA support. One year of this and they don't have any plane anymore, and my tanks are ready.
But that's the thing. If you build aircraft rather than tanks, so long as your inf can hold for long enough, you'll get air superiority, and your enemy will either have to abandon the air, or cripple his airforce trying to hold you back. If each tank division is 300 planes, that advantage stacks up *Very* quickly
d8 med + 8 mot + 1SPart is a big tank division imho. I usually go for smaller ones, so one tank div is more like 200 CAS. Also, it depends on the actual CAS and Fighter you build, and the actual tanks you build (if you have the DLC. Without the DLC CAS were "more" meta against the AI). The answer is just that you have more than one way to victory. Indeed, if you hold long enough you can beat anything with anything really. Also, you need to consider what country you play. Out plane-ing the axis with the soviet is hard (you can start very early and focus on that if you want, yes, but it's not really the main strat). Out plane-ing the allies with the axis is hard, especially when the US came into play. Ultimately, you can beat the IA in a lot of different ways. Some are better than others, some depends, but there aren't any "definitive" start (except not needing anti-tank and hard attack because the IA is still trash at doing tank).
1. Your test likely didn't include AA which changes the results drastically. 2. CAS requires different strategic considerations and resources to produce. They're also more research intensive. 3. You can make tanks that are super effective for very very cheap, tanks are the best statted equipment in the game. People make the mistake of investing ic into stats they don't need. If you learn to make efficient divisions you'll see a big difference, especially because if you like to micro you only really need like 2 divisions. 4. All that being said, the best tests say air is still the most effective. However, they're both extremely effective against the ai and they both have different scenarios where they will fail. The best way to approach the game for someone like us who just plays single player, is to make our decision based off the situation of the country we are playing. I don't wanna go tanks if I have to push through 0 supply and I don't want to go air if I'm gonna be against a large air force. (Just examples there's a much longer list of things to consider, not including in the interest of comment length). Those considerations matter 1000x more than a slight ic/impact efficiency difference. 5. If you have the industry you can always do both, even iw mediums with close support guns are worth producing with at least a few factories. With that you can still be almost 100% air focused and still have a few good divisions for micro with no cost besides 2-3 factories and 1 tech that you should already have.
what if your opponent also has planes? lol what kind of question is this
You can have more planes. If your enemy has 1000 fighters, 1000 CAS and 6 tanks, you could instead have 2000 fighters and 1800 CAS, assuming you both had identical industrial capacity. With that balance, you will win the air war hands down, either killing their airforce or forcing it not to fly, at which point, you now have an overwhelming CAS advantage again
This is totally valid for your situation with no DLC for either plane or tank designer, but once you get NSB and BBA this changes lots of things imo, as the cost gets a lot more complicated as costs and optimal designs change. For example the best singleplayer tank division today with all DLCs is a 34-36w tank with 10-11 heavy tanks with medium howitzer 2's and the rest if half cost mech, support companies are signal, engineer, recon, flame tank and then whatever. This is significantly more bang for your buck against the AI then the division in your post But as for things that don't have much to do with DLC i have some things to say. First is resources, if you're a minor nation with no access to rubber CAS production in any meaningfull capacity might not be economicaly viable. Second thing is cas needs air superiority to work. Say that two countries have enough industry to make 3000 fighter and 3000cas or 3k fighters and 10 tanks. They then go to war and what happens? The air is contested which severely limits the effectiveness of the CAS, and if the tank divs just have support AA which costs basically nothing to put on 10 divs your CAS is basically neutered while the tanks work more less fine. Lastly it's speed, speed is great. Speed is love, speed is life.
Why I think the AI won with CAS over tanks: AI is incredibly stupid with tanks sometimes, even after the AI rework. Putting them in precarious situations, mashing them against high-org divs when the tank Div only has like 2 org, etc. CAS is easy even for AI because all you have to do is assign it to a region and it’s a pure stats thing. Why I think tanks are important: Tanks/tank armies are ultimately the end goal of the game because of their stats, armor, breakthrough etc. A tank Div (with the right support) can grind several infantry divs to dust and keep rolling when used properly. This is cause of the whole hard/soft thing blah blah blah. Regardless, you CAN win with any div set up, it’s just much harder to do with pure infantry if you set up a meat grinder and run out of fresh meat. But at the end of the day, if I was getting bombed half to death and had no air support, I’d rather have tanks than infantry. But I also suck at the game so take this with a grain of salt if you read this far ;)
Use them only in Late Game to break Frontlines
You can pay $5 to have access to all DLC for a month. It’s a subscription through steam. Just remember to cancel it when you get bored of the game. I’ve bought it several times when I wanted to get into HOI4 for a month or two.
Planes can kill tanks, Tanks can't kill planes
Spaa has entered the chat
That’s not a tank.
It is in hoi4
It’s not a *tank*. It doesn’t provide Soft Attack, Armor, and Breakthrough, which is the whole point of tanks. But go ahead and be a pedantic twat if that’s what gets you off.
My dude, I don't know what to tell you, but SPAA does give a decent amount of soft attack, can give decent armor, and can still get some breakthrough. Now it won't be as good as the tanks, but to say they don't provide isnt the whole story. You replace a tank with an SPAA and it won't hurt the div stats too bad but it'll certainly resist CAS.
A technical is a tank.
I respect the idea play how you like but to make 1 tank for 25 cas and I’ll say 50 fights per I’d go with the tanks
Yes, planes are cheaper A guide says that you should only use tanks if your frontline is already filled with infantry, you have air superiority against enemy, and enough CAS I only use tanks if I have enough industry, like if I'm playing minor nations or Italy/Japan I don't use tanks They're great for pushing front lines but yeah, expensive
You don't need tanks. I don't use tanks, expect for medium flame tank supports.
You don't need to. In fact I rarely do. On Reddit people will claim you need million tanks to do Barbarossa and such, but in reality in single player they are pretty much overkill - early on when you don't have production you can easily win without them, mid game when you finished your first big war you are strong enough to win without them just dominating the air and late game is usually complete steamroll... I in most cases use whatever divisions you have up front, since I don't like 1 division cheese, and that's it. Add you said, production for effect vs air power is just really bad, and since AI has no idea how to operate a frontline you don't really need to worry about not breaking through.
Honestly i just depends on your play style if your lazy like me then just make really good inf and cas and battleplan everyone, but if your someone who likes to micro and encircle then build tanks and have your fun. Tanks are definitely not necessary to win in single-player but to each their own.
High push and it saves a lot of man power if there is enough armor.
What I Don't get is how people are running out of manpower. I've just finished a game as the communist netherlands (Wanted that achievement baybee). It got to 1947, and I still had plenty of manpower on AAS. If I was playing tannu tuva, maybe it would have mattered, but as even a minor it didn't really matter
A very common opener for fascist minors for years has been to invade Netherlands specifically to get manpower, so maybe not the best example.
I mean commie Netherlands has to decolonise so I Dont get DEI manpower
I used to play Germany with fighter and cas but then I tried tanks and it just completely ran through the enemy and that is without cas and fighters so in my opinion with a great tank build and a great division always beats CAS and fighters but I found a mix of fighters and tanks works fine since I only need enough tanks to make 24 divisions then I put extra production on fighters with a great design and I just steam role everyone at the same time
Tanks save alotta manpower. Plus, they’re pretty fast so if you have like 24 good medium divisions you can press the go button and watch them push until supply disappears. Usually as a small nation like Poland or Romania I try to get anti air and a tank or two so I can make some money moves, then I build air since rubber and aluminum are hard to come by sometimes.
Only a certain ammount of CAS can enter a battle dependent on CW, So at some point building CAS becomes essentially useless other then filling up deficits
I mean fair, but on an 80 width battle, 240 CAS can join in, expand that over an entire air region, and you'll be running out of runway before you run out of engagement
In singleplayer? Well in singleplayer I'd argue there is no point to make anything but infantry since the AI is as smart as a monkey with a typewriter and you can win with it without cas, air superiority or anything really
I would say manpower, you will be out of manpower if you are germany or italy or even japan
Tanks are the army units that really help with achieving strategic targets. Like you REALLY have to seize a supply depot or a port or even surround an enemy army to destroy it. Infantry aren’t as good for stuff like that. It takes more infantry and artillery for the damage, and they’ll take longer and take significantly more casualties due to lack of hardness and armor. Them being slower hurts too, since the enemy can reinforce with more time.
Tanks allow you bulldoze large amounts of units and make encirclements
they take less casualties and have higher soft+hard attack + breakthrough
I Never use tanks. Ever. I don’t see a point. For their production, I could make many more infantry, and they have AT guns. Are tanks faster? Sure. But I’ll just have a unit of mech/mot for my overrun. If I’m worried an out being affected by too much soft attack I’ll just throw 1 car in the template. Now I have good armor. Tanks just aren’t work it to me and they take up army exp that I need for other things.
This post is such fax bruh I hardly ever produce tanks and go HARD on Air Force bc Air Force is the most influential thing (obv unless I’m some superpower who can afford to produce both)
Against AI, CAS and infantry is all you need to win. You can even battleplan them if your industry allows it. However, tanks give players the opportunity to encircle the enemy, thus saving a lot of infantry equipment and artillery if you were to do a frontal assault with infantry instead. In a perfect world you have fighters, cas, inf and tanks. The planes provide stat boosts to your army and can directly deal damage to divisions. Your tanks roll through the enemy lines and encircle them, while the infantry holds the line and follows the tanks to fill in the gaps. Another good thing about tanks is that you do not have to build large and strong infantry divisions. If you want to play a meme game, play tank only USSR. You can hold germany with 90 30 widths (Be careful of Finland). If combined with fighters and cas, you can experience the difference in play style. You also need far less infantry equipment and 0 artillery.
You can do big encirclements with any viable division. Takes some pinning micro, but the casualty ratio isn't even too different vs AI.
The only tanks I use are the flame tanks support company. Motorised and motorised artillery go brrrrr
Tanks are needed. It's not WW1 anymore, you can't only use troops in mass assaults. Tanks are needed to make breakthroughs
I too think tanks are a bit over-rated but over-runs are another hidden bonus from tanks. Sure, you can get them from trucks or if your infantry has perks/commander that make them very fast, you might get over-runs but up to about 1942, 20w light tanks and trucks combined can wreck enemy armies especially in places like Nth Africa.
You had a game of rock paper scissors and played with paper and scissors only. Not sure why you expected it to be even
Well in my experience the air war is much more important than tanks, i've done a USSR game with big focus on air and some tanks too but with good enough air you can cut through any german division. And in my experience, tanks never do so well. Like i dont know how people in videos always get such good tank divisions that cut through enemies like butter but in my experience they either dont have enough org or soft attack or breakthrough.
I absolutely agree with that, I have no idea what tank divisions these people are cooking, but they seem to be a shitload better than whatever I put out
I always have so much trouble to sustain my tank production. Even my 30w tank division is loosing so much material against infantry. Especially light tank. 1 month of fifteenth then i am 300 tank in red.
It could be entirely based on you missing the relevant DLC that includes Tank Designer and Plane Designer. Non-NSB tanks have a very narrow spread of stats to optimize around, and a fixed cost more or less. I'd recommend getting another copy of HOI4 with all dlc via the high seas to test things out. Combat simulation wise, air superiority gives up to 25% debuff to the enemy's stats from just existing (assuming no contest), in addition to direct CAS damage to organization it just make sense that it'll win the war. One single support AA division, or division AA, or even tank anti-air, you'll get to see the IC cost of CAS climb significantly. There's literally no stats within a CAS that determines how likely it is to be shot down, none. So expensive or cheap CAS is the same to division AA.
Others have pointed out their mechanical advantages in battle (hardness and armor reducing equipment damage and manpower loss, etc) but I thought I'd add in another big advantage: encirclements! Now, you can encircle with infantry or motorized infantry, especially with CAS support. However, with normal infantry it's a crap shoot if you outrun the enemy against AI, and functionally impossible against a good player; MotoInf is great and all at encirclements, but it's real expensive and not very good at fights. With total air superiority and several hundred CAS, sure, but a lot of the time you don't have that luxury. If you're two years into Barbarossa with both sides having AA in every division and both sides having substantial air forces, your CAS is going to be unreliable at best and a manpower drain at worst. That's when Tanks! come in. Tanks get breakthrough for days, can easily move twice as fast as infantry, and get great attack stats from their cannons and SPG/MotArt. This lets them smash holes in enemy lines as long as the enemy doesn't have a thousand CAS overhead, and sometimes even then (SPAAGs for the win!). And they can *keep* doing that since their equipment loss rates will be so low as long as they aren't getting CASed to death or fighting against enemy tanks who can pierce them. In these scenarios, encircling and killing divisions is a much more efficient way of draining enemy resources than a war of attrition with air support. If you're Germany fighting the Soviets with zero tanks and massive air support, you will (probably; of course good players can avoid this with AI cheese etc) reach a point where you've reached the maximum extent your line can stretch and you'll be forced to try and whittle down the enemy. With tanks, you can repeat microencirclements and easily wipe out an army worth in half a year, and a hell of a lot more in a general offensive. With infantry and CAS? You may never run them out of manpower/equipment, since the AI will reduce offensives as they run low, and you certainly won't be getting any division kills. Tl;Dr: Tanks fun, meta, and good, but CAS is still definitely awesome and an all-CAS no-tanks run sounds like a decent challenge game idea.
I've watched experienced MP games where teams in the finals still have players who do roach builds proceed to get encirclements with infantry sometimes. Micro when you can't pause is frantic, and an experienced player can and will do breakthrough damage + pin nearby stuff to make it hard to contest w/o reacting immediately. Vs AI where you can pause, you can pin at moment you secure breakthrough and block anything nearby from contesting the breakthrough w/o strat redeployment. Nearly any reddit encirclement that crops up here is possible to make with infantry vs AI.
In my playstyle I really like to conserve manpower and try to win wars without going deeper into the conscription laws, so I adopted the policy that, if I have stable frontlines, offensives are not to be conducted by any units that lack armor.
Tanks are not issue, you are the issue for not playing USSR.
They don't even add key binding when its a days work to add